Thiourea (TU)/amine base cocatalysts
are commonly employed for
well-controlled, highly active “living” organocatalytic
ring-opening polymerizations (ROPs) of cyclic esters and carbonates.
In this work, several of the most active cocatalyst pairs are shown
by 1H NMR binding studies to be highly associated in solution,
dominating all other known noncovalent catalyst/reagent interactions
during ROP. One strongly binding catalyst pair behaves kinetically
as a unimolecular catalyst species. The high selectivity and activity
exhibited by these ROP organocatalysts are attributed to the strong
binding between the two cocatalysts, and the predictive utility of
these binding parameters is applied for the discovery of a new, highly
active cocatalyst pair.
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